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WE&T Magazine

Water Environment & Technology (WE&T) is the premier magazine for the water quality field. WE&T provides information on what professionals demand: cutting-edge technologies, innovative solutions, operations and maintenance, regulatory and legislative impacts, and professional development.

July
2015, Vol.
27, No.7

Featured Articles

Stacking up treatment at the log yard

Nearly
130 million board feet of logs moves each year through the marine terminal at
the Port of Olympia in Washington State. Most of this 26-ha (65-ac) site is
devoted to 7.6-m-high (25-ft-high) stacks of logs, log debarkers, and immense
log-loading machines. Every log that moves through the port leaves behind bark
and other organic material that accumulates and is washed into south Puget
Sound by rain.

Risk reduction

As part of a facility expansion at
the Skyway Wastewater Treatment Plant located in Burlington, Ontario, Canada,
currently nearing completion, dissolved-air-flotation (DAF)
waste-activated-sludge (WAS) thickeners were replaced with rotary drum
thickeners (RDTs). To address challenges with construction sequencing, the
region invested in the temporary installation of one of the RDTs. This
innovative solution has saved at least $1 million and decreased its risk
exposure to schedule delays and process upsets.

News

And not a drop to drink...

California
tries to head off water crisis by mandating strict water reductions for
utilities, but some say it is still too little

Drought
in the U.S. Southwest is not rare, but California has endured a particularly
bad stint this year thanks to low rainfall and the lowest snowpack ever
recorded. Because of this, in April, California Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.
announced a mandatory, statewide water reduction of 25% for water agencies and
the streamlining of investments in new technologies to make California more
drought resistant.

Coming in the next issue:

More paths to choose

The
scope of water and wastewater projects has increased from the delivery of clean
water and removal of wastewater to protecting natural systems; incorporating
energy-efficient operation; recovering water, nutrients, and other resources;
and safeguarding public health. This expansion in scope also has led to
progress in how these things can be done. New project delivery methods are
offering more flexibility and faster results for the water sector.For
example, the City of Casselberry, Fla., sought an alternate project-delivery
method when faced with strict new disinfection byproduct limits. To construct a
large and important project quickly, the city chose the
construction-manager-at-risk delivery method to take advantage of value
engineering, construction schedule savings, and open communication among the
facility owner, engineer, and contractor.Likewise,
the town of Oakland, Maine, faced several obstacles regarding its water
resource recovery facility. New regulations meant that relicensing the town’s
effluent discharge permit would be challenging. The most obvious choice was to
build a new treatment facility, but the cost of doing so would have been much
too high for Oakland.Instead,
Oakland looked to its neighbors. The town created an interlocal agreement for
sewer service with the nearby Waterville (Maine) Sewerage District. The
agreement saved money for Oakland and generated new revenue for Waterville,
which was able to take advantage of its unused capacity.

Also in this issue

A
winning combo. Scientists combine algae, bacteria, and wastewater to form a
novel treatment process that saves energy, removes nitrogen, and produces
biofuel.